Consideration of efficient shelving includes the particular configuration of respective shelves and the facilitation of shelf loading and load retention. For example, a fully flat shelf surface with no upstanding edge lip may be useful in one application where it is desired to easily slide, load or unload an item onto or from the surface without obstruction from an upstanding lip. In another application, it may be desired to surround a shelf with an upstanding lip to prevent loads from easily rolling or sliding off the shelf. In yet other applications, it may be desirable to provide a shelf with no front side lip but with upstanding lips on the shelf sides and/or along the rear edge of the shelf, for the same purposes.
At the same time, it is desired to provide a shelving unit which can be shipped in flat configuration and erected on site. If the unit is to present a variety of shelves as noted above, a plurality of different shelves must be provided, increasing the number of shelves necessary for a user to customize a shelving unit for a particular application. This extends the number of shelf components necessary as well as the cost, and results in an excess of unused shelves not utilized in the desired application.
Accordingly, it has been one objective of the invention to provide an improved variable shelf apparatus having a variety of shelf configurations easily presented and capable of providing all the application varieties above, but without the need to supply extra or additional shelves for each desired configuration or application.
A further objective of the invention has been to provide an improved shelving apparatus and methods capable of presenting a variety of shelf configurations.